The uncomfortable middle
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The Solopreneur Copilot P.S. read an web version of this email here: barrontech.kit.com/posts/ Last week I sat in deadstill traffic for 30 minutes, so I pulled out my phone and decided to record a voice note. Talking through the state of my businesses out loud to nobody. Deals pending at Echelix. New hire starting in under 2 weeks. CoSell Buddy has its first real user from my services business. A couple of Barron Tech prospects I'm working -- one I'm optimistic about, one I'm genuinely not sure on. Real progress on paper but none closed yet (I do have Barron Tech clients and have sold about $800k this year at Echelix, which is not bad -- so not starting from zilch). About halfway through the voice note I caught myself saying "I'm just kind of in the uncomfortable middle right now." Every solo operator hits this and most of them don't write about it because it doesn't make for good content. There's nothing to celebrate yet. There's also nothing to grieve yet. You're just in this in-between zone where the inputs are real but the outputs haven't shown up. I think the middle is actually the most important phase of building anything. Not the start, where everything's new and you're running on adrenaline. Not the end, where you have results to point to. The middle. Because the middle is where you find out if your system actually works or if your first wins were luck. Here's what I keep reminding myself. The inputs are real. CoSell Buddy got built and works -- I have a paying user. The Echelix pipeline has 3 deals worth $1.6M-$2.2M sitting in late stages. The new hire I'm bringing on is a real seller who can generate pipeline I can't generate alone. None of those existed 6 months ago. The middle just feels worse than it is. When you're proving something out, the absence of finished results gets way more attention in your head than the presence of compounding work. That's a brain bug, not a business problem. What you can't do in the middle is panic. Most people make one of two mistakes here. Either they freeze and stop putting in inputs, which guarantees the middle stretches into 6 months instead of 6 weeks. Or they chase every shiny thing -- new offer, new audience, new product, new niche -- and break the system that was actually working. Both kill momentum. The move is boring. Keep the inputs going. Stay narrow on the things that compound. Trust the lag. For me right now that means a handful of things every day. Outreach to CROs and VPs Sales who fit the profile. Continuing to build out CoSell Buddy. Helping my new hire ramp. Showing up for my kids and my wife in a way I couldn't when I was on the corporate treadmill. That last one matters more than the rest combined. The middle still sucks some days. But the version of this where I'm grinding 60 hours a week chasing a number for someone else's company -- that version was worse. By a lot. Keep going. The middle ends when the inputs catch up. Ever felt this way? To your solopreneur success, Matt Barron P.S. All previous emails can be read here: barrontech.kit.com P.S.S. - follow me on all my socials here: |